In The Mouth of the Wizard’s Well- Star Child Musings

And a few travel photos

from A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick

the star child contemplates earth

Before the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Persia, and Greece there were even prior civilizations. Whether or not these amazing architects from the neolithic mists of time were lost Atlanteans, or whether they had been in contact with angels or space aliens as per Von Daniken or, whether we, ourselves are the descendants of starmen or mud is all a great unknown except of course for the matter of cosmic carbon!!

The meaning of these wonderful ruins, who the people were, why they built and what answers they sought, remain mostly a mystery. We speculate solstices, astronomy, and religious sacrifice, but nothing is known for sure. Humans have gazed at the heavens and wondered for thousands of years. Ancient astronomers and observers of nature incorporated what they saw into religion and ritual, as did the more recent mesoamerican peoples.

The “henge” sites in the UK and Ireland were built in days of no known technology or written history and they pre-date the pyramids. I decided to go through my photos and find the best from last year’s trip- there were so many and I had only used a few which are on my Gateways and Journey’s Blog.

The Ring of Brodgar, The Orkneys in ScotlandRing of Brodgar- the sky beckonson the Salisbury Plain!

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and from The Mouth of the Wizard’s Well (Chichen Itza)

more mystery in central America, though not as old!! (200-900 CE)

El Caracol, the mayan observatory

The fire of Kukulkan

A brief background on the mystical Maya

The solar journey of Chak ek (Venus) played a significant role in Mayan ceremony and belief. Their calendar, called the long count, was more accurate than ours and they had an incredible system of mathematics. On a large playing field they participated in a ball game of life and death, light and darkness; a great sacred ritual which opened the doors of the fearsome underworld (Xibalba). There were 3 levels reaching upward from Xibalba, through the earth and to the heavens, all held together by a mystical tree on which souls traveled.

Caves were symbolically sacred to the Mayans and the root of the great tree can be seen in the cave Balankanche at Chichen Itza.

Only a few portions of their written “bible,” called codices, survive as “The Popol Vu,” thanks to one far seeing monk who understood their value and saved them at a time when the church burned everything in sight that was not Christian. How Mayan glyphs came finally to be translated is another story!

Sayil –

Labna- the mayans believed that passing through a gate was to enter another dimension. It was a sacred ritual and undertaking.

When I journeyed through the Yucatan from Tulum to Uxmal, along the Sac be and Ruta Puuc, I fell in love with the Mayan story and symbolic ritual and wrote a bit on this on my Journeys and Gateways Blog).

During a quiet period on the Chichen Itza site I received a special privilege invite by a kind curator to enter the “snail” ( caracol) which is off limits to the public. Like entering a church portal and touching holy water or a sacred icon on the wall, I instead reverently placed my hand on the painted hand print of an ancient astronomer-priest who reached through time and space to greet me.

After all, we didn’t have to come from any other place in the cosmos. All of the mysterious cosmos is in each one of us!! Sol is our star and we are starmen! So I leave you with words from Joni Mitchell’s song

“we are stardust, we are golden and we have to get ourselves back to the garden!”

and David Bowie’s

There’s a starman waiting in the sky, he’d like to come and meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds

Glad you liked this post. I love the mayan history. It is so mysterious and quite alien to European philosophical development etc. Yes, sadly much was lost during the time of the conquistadors. They are still trying to piece it together. The story of the glyphs and the very young boy(13) who found a key to deciphering them-David Stuart, is fascinating. There is an excellent PBS program called Breaking the Maya Code about this.

Ancient buildings seem to have been made only of rocks. And the builders could move some really giant ones. Why did we shift to trees and ended up depleting our forests? I wonder. There would have been rocks for everyone, I think. Great post, Cybele. Have a great week!

thanks Linda!! The history and imagination of these places are wonderful! The mayan story is very strange and unusual. It’s only more recently that some of their history has been revealed by the translation of their glyphs. Stonehenge and Brodgar of course remain shrouded still in mystery.

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Introverted, Neurotic, Freckled Peculiar (INFP personality)
time and other traveler,and photographer, I'm the hopeful storyteller, sometimes a virtual wanderer, a seeker of light and magic - and a finder of old bones, tomes and philosopher stones- Just your average everyday mad woman.